New York Times columnist Paul Krugman showed his usual class when discussing Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, whose comprehensive budget plan calls for transforming Medicare into a voucher system in order to preserve the financially imperiled program and to trim the deficit. For his efforts, Krugman claimed that Ryan’s “voucher would kill people, no question.”

Krugman featured as a talking head in a CNN “Up Close” profile of Ryan by CNN journalist Gloria Borger that aired Sunday night.

[Video below the break.]

The brief exchange:

Krugman: “To be a little melodramatic, the voucher would kill people, no question.”

Krugman: “The cuts in Medicare that he’s proposing, the replacement of Medicare by a voucher system, would in the end mean that tens of millions of older Americans would not be able to afford essential health care. So that counts as cruelty to me.”

Krugman had previously slammed Rep. Ryan, a Tea Party favorite, in an August 2010 column as a “flimflam man,” one “drenched in flimflam sauce,” no less. That devastating rebuttal sadly backfired when Krugman’s source defended Ryan.

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